Hans Waldemar Ruin (18 June 1891, Helsinki – 3 November 1980, Stockholm) was a Finland-Swedish philosopher and writer. He was professor of philosophy at Åbo Akademi University 1945–1947 and associate professor of aesthetics at Lund University 1947–1952, where he was then research associate professor 1952–1957. He was also associate professor of psychology at the University of Helsinki 1927–1936 and of art and literature psychology 1936–1949.
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Biography
Ruin was the son of Professor Waldemar Ruin and Flora Henrika Lindholm. He married Karin "Kaisi" Sievers (1894) in 1917, daughter of physician Richard Sievers and Freifrau Karin von Bonsdorff. He had two children, Martina and Olof, and is maternal grandfather to David and Marika Lagercrantz. His grandchild was also named Hans Ruin and became a philosopher.
Ruin graduated from Nya Svenska Läroverket in 1909. He received his Candidate of Philosophy degree from the University of Helsinki in 1913, followed by his Licentiate in 1921 and Doctor of Philosophy in 1923. His academic dissertation was titled Erlebnis und Wissen. In his dissertation, Ruin was critical of behaviourism, viewing humans as intellectual beings, a conviction he never abandoned.
In 1923 Ruin published the study Nutidskonst i psykologisk belysning, in which he sought the psychological foundations of the transition from Impressionist art to modernist movements and the pursuit of "pure art". This was a theme that would remain central throughout his work. In 1934 he published the essay collection Gycklare och apostlar, in which he addressed the political threats posed by totalitarian ideologies in Europe. In this work he also broke with his earlier inspiration Ludwig Klages, after Klages aligned himself with Nazi ideals, warning that the intuitionistic and vitalistic ideas that had informed his own thinking had on the continent allied themselves with a primitivistic anti-intellectualism hostile to culture.